I'd like Animal Crossing a lot more if the NPC interaction was more substantial. For a game that at least on the surface is so heavily based on helpin' out yr neighbors, they're pretty boring to talk to, shucks!!

That's kinda what put me off too. Maybe I just didn't invest myself or enough time into it. Maybe I'll giver it another go????

I feel like it should be a law for games: if there's gonna be lotsa dialogue, plz make it interesting. The amount of cutscenes I skip these days is pretty high.

I can't hear people talk about Animal Crossing without thinking about this. Puts a whole new spin on things...

This is fantastic. It takes a twisted mind to view a cutesy game like Animal Crossing in such a dark manner, but it definitely works. I cracked up at this part: "I had tried to call my mom on the phone they put in my bedroom, but all I got was an answering machine that spouted utterly useless Orwellian bullshit."

I would have wanted to figure that out on my own, unless that was something that was never going to be obvious or hinted at anyway. (I didn't give him much of a try after I initially wore down his health mind you, but I'd been told he is tricky. And I wanted to be more awake.)

Is never explicitly mentioned how you can beat Vamp. The game has this subtle way of telling the player the utility of the Syringe which works well in the logic of the Metal Gear universe, but yeah, people regularly get stuck with Vamp for hours so is better just to say what you have to do.

Ah, honestly I tried some different things - guns, knife, melee, anaesthetic bullets, even a Playboy LOL. I was slowly going through my inventory but would never have thought of the syringe.

Although now that I think of it, I did find it interesting that I could equip it (as an item mind you) but Snake had only ever auto-used it in cutscenes so far. It's probably better that you told me anyway, I want to beat this before Rising and I have Act 5 & 6? and I'm sure about 10 hours worth of cutscenes - to go.

Chapter 25 of FE:Awakening went down in a complete clusterfuck. Things started out fine until around turn 4 when I started down the right side of the map when I started getting bogged down in asshat reinforcements. Worse still was that I had sent Severa (whom I had just recently recruited from her Paralogue chapter) along with my Avatar to scrub out the Trickster and Siege Tome asshats when the reinforcements started pouring in from the sides of the map while more continued popping up back in the rear and the bottom corners. At this point I noticed that Severa wasn't going to be able to handle more than the initial Trickster and if I lose her (playing on Casual) my Avatar would be left exposed and dead (my Avatar got horribly screwed over, especially in Speed despite the fact that I took Luck as my Flaw, oh and she's a Dark Flyer since my plan involved passing Galeforce on down to Morgan, so she's weak and slow as hell for this point of the game as well as carting around weaknesses to practically everything (only Griffin Riders have it worse (unless its a Manakete riding a Griffin Rider))). As a last ditch effort, I send Donnel and Panne into the eastern fray to provide a distraction for Severa to make a break southwest then northwest to the rest of the party; who are in a world of hurt of their own as the reinforcement numbers keep piling on and even my beefiest characters (Chrom, Stahl, and Lucina) are getting completely overwhelmed by the deluge of reinforcements, let alone my weaker characters like Virion, Maribelle, Gaius, Ricken, and Cherche (whom I reclassed into a Valkyrie; don't ask) having to manage without getting gibed.

The next two turns involved the craziest amount of dodging from Virion and Ricken as well as a few rather inspired moves on my part involving having one person trade with Virion so that he was equipped with his Underdog Bow instead of his Killer Bow as well as having Lissa and Cherche run for the hills. Meanwhile Donnel was getting his ass handed to him out in the eastern front and Panne was a) already pretty beat up, and b) a Griffin Rider which meant that even a second out on the field would end with her getting turned into Rabbit Burgers. By the end of his second turn out covering my Avatar's ass, he was down to about 10 HP, two uses of Orsin's Hatchet left (his 30 odd luck only allowing a use to be burned once every three attacks)....and just hit level 10 Fighter (see, with my playthrough scheme, I had demoted Donnel from Hero down to Fighter for a number of reasons 1) to lower his ILC(internal level counter), 2) to pick up the Fighter's skill set sooner rather than later (for more options you see), 3) to build his Axe rank, and 4) to not have to deal with prepromoted class caps any longer than I had to (since prepromoted class caps are comparable with those used in earlier games, i.e. 20s-30s, they suck here when everything has 20s-30s at least)), but then the seal had been broken and he had his old Hero stats (adjusted for the Warrior's base stats) plus some extra Res. :getin:

Meanwhile, the western front was eventually joined by Severa who also took to the hills while Chrom took to the fort since his lack of enemy phase was a more tempting beacon for the opportunist AI (and also because Lucina had just vacated it due to a failure to dodge), Henry needed cover so he transferred Gaius from Chrom (where my long running game plan finally started coming to fruition as my former Trickster was now rocking Warrior strength and was able to dodgetank like a pro as well as sporting enough strength to blow suckers away, even with only Bronze weapons. Ricken was left alone in a forest early on and had a few good dodges during one turn but like all good things he too came to an end (until the next match). And up on the hill Lissa had a few good dodges during the previous turn but a choice to heal Severa instead of her cost her the match (also, apparently when you proc a Support Defend against an Astra proc you block the whole thing (unless you don't in which case; HOLY HELL STAHL!!!)). After that though things stabilized rather nicely (aside from my lack of attentiveness to the non reinforcement enemies which included a forged Rexcalibur wielding Dark Flier hovering the near the place I finally decided to let Donnel have a rest and to bring on the Panne; seconds later the Panne was felt and then I moved on) and the siege tome asshats and the boss were all that was left.

The endgame meanwhile merely involved punching a hole into the wall of meat surrounding Grima followed by sending Chrom and Cynthia to bash the badguy with some legendaries while everyone else kept them and Avatar covered (since she continued to be useless).

And with that, FE:Awakening has now joined my Four for February list (now to quickly finish three other games).

I don't really get the whole four of February thing. Do people really play through four games in a month? I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two. These days a single game can can me several months...

I don't really get the whole four of February thing. Do people really play through four games in a month? I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two. These days a single game can can me several months...

I don't really get the whole four of February thing. Do people really play through four games in a month? I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two. These days a single game can can me several months...

Yeah, no kidding. Even in my glory days as a high school student I couldn't finish four in a month. Fire Emblem will be my bedtime game for the next four months, most likely.

I don't really get the whole four of February thing. Do people really play through four games in a month? I mean, any month...even at my best I don't think I've done more than two. These days a single game can can me several months...

I never said I was going to play through four games this month, I only intend to beat four games (by finishing ones I've left for greener pastures in the past like Tales of Symphonia, Ultima 3, or Dead or Alive 5).

Then again, I could always try to blaze through something like The Last Story or possibly something quick like Sin&Punishment Wii (although half the month's already gone).